• warlock •

Notes: Here is a word you don't hear every day. Witch is used often enough as an insult to women, but the male variant of witch doesn't carry the same pejorative connotation as does witch. The abstract noun expressing what warlocks are up to is warlockry "male witchcraft".

In Play: As suggested before, warlock is not a word you meet every day, unless you play video games; even there, warlocks are usually referred to as "wizards": "Warren is a warlock in Dungeons and Dragons and wields a mean Eldritch Blast." Elsewhere you would have to see real magic to think of warlocks: "Damian blew into the door lock, and the door opened as though he were a warlock!" (Well, it does rhyme with door lock.)

Word History: Today's word was warloghe in Middle English, from Old English wærloga "oath-breaker", comprising wær "pledge, oath" + -loga "liar", from leogan "to lie". Wær comes from Proto-Indo-European wer-o- "true, faithful" that we see in Latin verus "true", and Russian vera "belief, faith" and the feminine name Vera, which somehow found its way into English. On its own, it came through the old Germanic languages to English as very. The same word that turned up in Old English as leogan (Modern English lie "to tell an untruth"), retained the G in German lügen and Russian lgat', both meaning "to lie". (It's time now to thank Sara Goldman, whose witchcraft is coming up with verbs like today's magical Good Word.)

I am fairly certain I first read this word in the works of CS Lewis perhaps aged 8 or so. I think it took some time and a bit of context to work out what it meant - these days I'd just turn to my phone and look up a word I was unsure of.

One of my cousins married, unbeknownst to him, a witch. I mean the real “double, double toil and trouble; fire burn, and caldron bubble” type. When he walked in on her coven, all nude while boiling eye of newt and wart of toad over a Sterno flame, he was invited to be their warlock with conjugal duties all around. He got the h*** out of Dodge.

Yes, I have so many cousins that I can use one of them to illustrate almost any Goodword.

I have an ex-sister-in-law who came home one day to inform everyone she was now a witch. Frankly, I knew there was something wrong with her from the get-go. Even changed her name to one of the minor dieties in the witch world. To the best of my knowledge, I have never met a warlock or someone who considered themselves a warlock. Seems something akin to satanism in a way.

Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I'm going to change myself. -- Rumi